Malaysia

Hello friends!
Here are a few videos I've taken in the past week. The first two are from the festival we found in Little India while in Penang last weekend. The first video is of the processional that was following a shrine. The people walking behind the shrine are holding books on their heads. We asked a few people why they were walking around with books on their heads, but it was never properly explained so I don't know the significance of it.


The second video is of a man that was part of the processional playing the Shennai, which is like an Indian oboe.


The third video is from today. I went with some extended host family members to a fishing village on the western coast of Malaysia, about an hour away from KL. We went to a lookout on a hill near the village and there were monkeys that walked right up to us and tried to take our cheese puffs. There's something strangely entertaining about watching monkeys eat, so I took a video.

This past weekend Kailea and I went to Penang, an island in northern Malaysia. We stayed in Georgetown, which is the city on the island and is a UNESCO world heritage site. Georgetown is a culturally concentrated city- maybe because of the space limitation of being on an island. There are many places of worship, clan houses, and cultural centers and despite the proximity these things all retain their own identity, making Georgetown a place of great variety. On our hostel’s corner there was a Hindu shrine, a Chinese temple, and we were right down the street from the Masjid Kapitan Keling mosque.

It was a great reminder of the strong cultural groups in Malaysia. My family is Chinese so I don’t experience much besides Chinese Malaysian culture and Kuala Lumpur, which is a truly modern and globalized city that resembles any number of modern cities around the globe. It certainly has its distinctly Malaysian characteristics, but Penang was a good reminder that the rest of Malaysia does not have the same frozen yogurt chain that I can find here in KL and in Los Angles.

Georgetown has atmosphere, which is made more tangible because of the constant activity. The buildings contribute to the feel of Georgetown, but the people shopping, eating, talking, walking shopping, or just sitting, give the city life and warmth. It was really strange being herded with the tourists for the first time in Malaysia during my stay here. I’m used to doing things with locals or doing things that tourists don’t do, like riding the bus to work, so I don’t associate myself with the crowd on vacation even though I look more like them than Malaysians. Being a part of the camera crowd made me feel more like an outsider than I usually do, but it was fun watching people’s expressions change when they realized I was not a normal tourist, but had a little more understanding of the culture and the general lifestyle. A waiter at an Indian restaurant in Little India obviously assumed that we were tourists and that he was going to have to explain everything to us, and did not look excited about it. When we ordered our drinks like Malaysians he looked a little dumbfounded and then laughed before going to get our order, so that was pretty entertaining. But for the occasions when I didn’t know what was going on, I was able to ask dumb tourist questions without being embarrassed because everyone’s expectations of me were so low.

One of the best parts of the trip was meeting and spending time with some people in our hostel. We met a girl from Holland the first night and spent the next morning traveling around with her and ate lunch with a couple we met in the common room. I have met some really interesting and genuinely great people in hostels because they attract a certain clientele and because I’ve been lucky, and this time was not an exception.


Kek Lok Si temple, the largest buddhist temple in South East Asia


A Hindu festival in Little India


Making spring roll wrappers at the Kuala Kangsar Market


Eating a peanut pancake in the million degree heat


Sunset at Batu Ferringhi

Learning about Malaysian food has been a mysterious adventure because so much of it is very new to me, and also because it's rare that I know what I'm eating. Food is inexpensive in Malaysia and eating out is very popular, certainly because it's so affordable, but also because it's a social activity. In my first week and a half here I ate out with my host mom at least once a day, and times that I have been invited to hang out with Malaysians have always involved going out to eat.

Malaysian life is punctuated by eating. There are more acceptable eating times here. We have breakfast, lunch, tea at 4, dinner at 6ish, and then supper around 9 or 10. We don't always take tea and I skip supper sometimes, but usually each of these eating occasions is a full-fledged meal. I live with a Chinese Malaysian family so we eat Chinese food at home, but Malaysian food is as varied as the racial profile of the country. There are three distinct racial groups in Malaysia: Malays, Chinese, and Indians. Each group has its own food and the diversity and cross over between the groups creates a large amount of variety.

Most meals are rice or noodle based, and Malaysian food is spicy and generally very flavorful. Each region has its specialties and in Penang last weekend we ate peanut pancakes, some of the best Indian food I've ever had in Little India, and some regional noodle specialties.


Char kwey teow hawker stall.


Char kwey teow and Sugarcane juice.


A Gurney Drive, a hawker center in Penang.


Fried chicken skin, spring rolls, fried yam, and some other unidentifiable fried objects (UFOs?)

A lot of tropical fruit grows in Malaysia, some of which I was familiar with, but most of it I'd never had or even seen before. A lot of the local fruits are very sweet and are strange looking (to me) with hair, spikes, and vibrant colors. I haven't had durian yet, but people ask me on a regular basis if I've had it and what I think. It's probably the third most frequently asked question after "Where are you from?" and "Is it hot here for you?"




Rambutan, a hairy fruit.

Some of the best food I've had since I've been here is from hawker stalls. Malaysia is full of street food and hawker stalls pop up on corners, in hawker centers, and yesterday I saw a hawker biking his stall down the street. Most stalls only sell a few things, but the good stalls do a really good job at the one thing they sell. And hawker food is even less expensive than food from restaurants so it can make eating out really cheap.


Satay hawker stall.

One of the things I enjoy the most about Malaysian food culture is the communal nature of meals and eating. Malaysians usually order for me (this probably happens to me more frequently than normal Malaysians because I usually don't know what to order or how to pronounce most things on the menu) and at family meals one person orders a number of dishes for the table. When the food comes the dishes stay in the middle of the table and everyone takes what they'd like. People often refill my plate for me when they see I've run out of food and they go out of their way to make sure to give me things I like and to make sure I have enough food. I am learning a lot about hospitable eating and having the opportunity to eat out often because of the availability and inexpensiveness of food has been a pleasure.

Here are a few more quick pictures of things I've been doing:

Kailea got here! She stayed with my family for a night and then left to join her own Malaysian family.



I took the train AND the bus home from work and made it back alive! Not such a large accomplishment for a 21 year old that's been riding buses for a while, but Malaysian buses make almost zero sense to me, so I consider this an achievement. Everyone else seems to understand that if you stand on random corners the bus will magically stop for you and that only particular fare cards will work and mine does not, even though there is a picture of a bus on it.



We went out to dinner tonight with some friends and they bought the whole food court. This was only about 2/3 of the food. The rest of it wouldn't fit in the frame.